6 months and counting

Well, let's see.....since the last post, Oliver has started saying syllables. He started with ma and has moved onto da. He likes to blow zerberts all day. Oh, and he is crawling now. He started crawling at 5 1/2 months much to the surprise of Annie and I. He now likes to try and climb Mount Dad.

Been a long time

Time sure does fly when you are having fun. Oliver is now 13 weeks old! How did we get here so fast? Wasn't it just yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital? He has grown from this:

To this:

He has had many adventures so far. He got to meet his grandparents:

Early on, he was very fussy while sleeping at night. Lots of grunts and sounds that we thought were Chewbacca. The doctor said he had acid reflux so she gave us some medicine. That helped a LOT. We also added a cool mist humidifier since Texas is so darn hot. The combo of both has made Oliver a much happier baby.

Annie started back to work yesterday and I am now Mr. Mom. I work at 430am and am home by 9am. Annie then hands the kiddo off to me and goes to work herself. I am looking forward to the adventures that Oliver will take me on. He talks all day long, kicks his feet like he is riding a bike, smiles at everyone and likes to play in his activity gym:

Annie jokes that I get him too hyper and he doesn't know how to slow down when he is with me. I don't know what gave her that idea. Could it be the ninja poses while wearing a onesie about zombies?

Maybe. All I know is this. Oliver is amazing. By far the greatest thing in our lives. Sometimes I wonder why we waited so long to have kids but then I realize, Oliver came when the time was just right. He has given us both a new energy in life. (and exhausted us too) The last three months have been such a great ride. And filled with many, many.....diapers.

Second Week checkup

 

Well here we are. Our week two checkup. It is hard to believe that on Tuesday, Oliver will be three weeks old. Everything is still so fresh in my mind from his birth. From the weather (drizzly and cloudy) to the room next to us that had a blue balloon tied to the door that said, "it's a boy".

The checkup went great. They started graphing his growth today and everything is within the normal levels. When he was born he was 8 pounds 3.9 ounces and was 21 inches long. Today he was 9 pounds even and 22 inches long. His weight is in the 50% percentile and his length is in the 90% percentile. So we have a healthy giant! (I want to measure his wingspan too because when he stretches out, look out!) Oliver's temperature, heart rate and oxygen level were also right at the norm.

Oliver is sleeping more through the night. Instead of waking up almost every hour, we get about three hours per feeding now. Yippee! We are going to start introducing him to bottle feeding soon. If he agrees with it then Annie will be able to sleep through the night for once while I handle the reigns of feeding Oliver. That should be pure entertainment!

Adios Amigos!

Sleep Deprivation and Gas

When you are preparing for your first child you get lots of advice from every corner of the spectrum. Veteran parents, relatives, that drinking buddy that thinks children are evil. All of them tell you things to get ready for, things to prepare and things that make no sense at all. And the universal bit of information that is passed down by everyone is...get ready to be exhausted like you have never been before.

Well to that last bit of info, I have one thing to say, "HOLY CRAP YOU ARE RIGHT!"

I have always been able to function on little sleep. When I would work the 5am shift, I went to bed at 11pm or even midnight, woke up around 3:45am and left for work around 4:15am. Four to five hours of sleep a night was no problem. If I was tired when I got home from work I would take a power nap. So I thought that I might be, if even a little bit, prepared for the first few months of parenthood. At least in the realm of sleeping. Boy was I wrong! In just two short weeks, I think I may have slept for a combined thirty minutes. Seriously. I feel like an involuntary insomniac being held at gun point to stay awake. That or I am in Navy SEAL training and this is hell week. Only hell week has lasted two weeks.

And I shouldn't even be complaining. I am not the one that has to wake up every two hours to have a small child latch onto one of the most sensitive parts of my body and suck on it like he is trying to pull a bowling ball through a straw. That would be Annie's job. She has the right to be complaining or say she is tired. I am just a whiny new dad that should be grateful that he is safe from the human boob vacuum.

Side note... I am not comparing my two weeks with Oliver as hell or that he is anything less than an angel. He is amazing. He is beautiful. He has reinvented my life. Seriously, this post may sound like I am hating being a parent. That could not be further from the truth. I have loved every second of Oliver's life. He is everything to me. This post is simply a funny way for me to talk about the little details about parenthood. For if you cannot have a sense of humor about sleep deprivation, what can you have a sense of humor about? Gas? Cause Oliver has a LOT of gas. (Which is half the reason that he stays awake all night long.) My little Oliver is a grunter. All night long he lies in his bassinet, grunting, like a caveman trying to mark his territory. Grunt, grunt, grunt, cry, grunt, whimper, fart, grunt, cry, fart, faaaart, moan. That is our nightly orchestra. It is really cute and amusing for a little while. The you realize it is Wednesday and you haven't slept since October. Does that even make sense? Of course not! I haven't slept in three days! In my head right now, I am typing on a wet noodle and the computer screen is a walrus. Seriously. My computer screen is the walrus. Koo Koo Kachoo.

So to anyone that has gone through this newborn babydom before, I finally understand. I have been hazed. I have been baptized in the lake of deprivation. Can I get an amen? Or a pillow? Please? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Oh wait, time to change ANOTHER diaper......

Oliver versus the Toilet

Oliver hears his first toilet flush. I hope this doesn't mess with his potty training.

Hungry baby

This was taken on the first night of Oliver's life. He was swaddled up, nice and cozy, and ready to eat. And he let us know this by crying, a lot. So while Annie got ready I thought I would record Oliver. What else is a new father to do when his child is crying and needs something? Record it, of course

Oliver's Birthday

We had been in this position before. Or so we thought. It is 8am on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 and Annie wakes me to say that contractions had started and they were pretty rough. She was going to take a hot shower and see how she felt afterward. We were both excited but hesitant since we had already gone through one false labor. A week and a half earlier, on January 22nd, contractions had sent us to our doctor's office to have a labor check. We were told that, although Annie was not due until February 9th, she was already 4cm dilated and we needed to go to the hospital. Yet after 5 hours of Annie being stuck with and IV drip, having blood drawn and doing hundreds of laps around the maternity ward, the contractions went away and we were sent home. There would be no baby that day.

So this time we wanted to be certain. As Annie took her shower, I double checked that everything we may need in the hospital was packed. At 8:30am Annie's contractions were coming faster and harder. We headed to our doctor's office yet again. This time Annie was 6cm dilated and almost completely effaced. This baby was coming, today. We got in our car and I drove as fast as I could to Seton Southwest hospital. The nurses rushed us to our room and immediately began an IV drip for Annie so that she could receive her epidural. Nearly an hour later, and Annie almost 9cm dilated, she received that glorious pain equalizer. Just in time too, the contractions were really hitting Annie hard. After a few moments the anesthesialogist asked how Annie was doing. "Great," she said, "on my left side. My right side is getting worse!" Typical Annie. Medicine works differently for her. Always has. So the doctor added a little kick to her drip and a few minutes later the right side pain vanished too.

At around 1:30pm, nearly 6 hours after Annie's first contraction, and just under 3 hours at the hospital, the nurse said it was time for Annie to begin small pushes. In the room with Annie were myself and her mother Sheila. We were her "helpers". When a contraction came we held her feet and I counted to ten so Annie knew how long to push. We did this off and on till about 3pm when our OB-GYN Doctor Landwermeyer entered the room. She said "how about we have a baby?" So we all got ready. Ok, it's not like we did anything different. We just now knew that there wasn't much more time before our little one arrived. And we were right. At 3:39pm on February 2nd, 2010, Oliver Eoin Painting was born. He weighed 8 pounds 3.9 ounces and was 21 inches long. That explained all those beatings Annie took while he was still in the womb.

Our doctor had noticed just before delivery that Oliver had passed his meconium (black, tar-like feces that is pretty creepy to see and every newborn has) while still in the womb. She said this happens from time to time and they simply have to make sure to do an extra thorough cleaning when he was actually born. A few extra hands were on deck from the nurses station to make sure everything was ok with baby Oliver. As he finally entered the world, Oliver's umbilical chord was slightly wrapped around his neck but it was also nothing that worried our doctor too much. The entire staff did an amazing job at checking Oliver and made sure that everything was just fine. I watched with dumbfounded awe as they cleaned this tiny baby. My son......MY son. I turned to Annie and kissed her forehead and told her that I loved her. She smiled and looked over at our child. My mother-in-law handed me a camera and I started to take as many pictures as I could. Shortly after, the room was cleared of everyone but one nurse, Annie, myself and Oliver. Soon after that the nurse left too and Annie and I were alone with our child for the first time. We didn't speak much during the next hour. The occasional "I love you" or whispered "wow" could be heard. We mostly just stared at Oliver. Smiling. Our lives were forever changed at 3:39pm on February 2nd. And we couldn't be happier.